It has become increasingly common to package liquid products, in particular liquid food products such as water, milk, juice or wine, in containers of a collapsible type.
By a container of a collapsible type is meant a container having a compartment which is defined by flexible walls and whose volume is dependent on the relative position of the walls.
It is known to manufacture webs consisting of interconnected containers of the type described above rolled onto a bobbin and to arrange such a roll in a filling machine.
A filling machine of this kind is known, for example, from WO99/41149. The document discloses how the rolled-out web of container blanks is fed through the filling machine so as to arrive, in order of priority, at a station for cutting open a filling duct, at a station for filling each container and at a sealing station for sealing the filled containers.
A filling machine usually represents a relatively considerable investment and there is, thus, a need for filling machines of a simple design as well as filling machines with a high filling capacity, i.e. which are capable of filling a comparatively large number of containers per time unit.